


For Fear and For Vengeance

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Codependency, Considering the Non-American View, Deep Intel, Gen, Mystery Death, Protests, The Twins Are Very Angry, Tony Stark isn't the centre of the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 00:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 15,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13112256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: A little younger, and suddenly HYDRA pretending to be SHIELD cannot keep their cover and accept in for experimentation the twins.In another world the twins are younger, and angrier, but no less powerful.





	1. Worth and Worthiness

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [MaximoffFicExchange2017](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/MaximoffFicExchange2017) collection. 



> >   
>  **Prompt:**
>> 
>> I know no one will write this but  
> I've always wondered what it would be like if the Maximoffs had been younger during AOU, you can pick the age, they can be 16 or 4 but either way adolescent. That's all I have for a prompt, you can rewrite AOU or you can write what happens after, whatever you want

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written while listening to, amongst other things, [ _The Beginning of the Nightmare_ also by Aviators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_lxIiJ8ck4><em>Sweet%20Dreams</em>%20by%20Aviators</a>,%20<a%20href=), and [_Street Fight_ by Adam Jensen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZIDOnIdd0).
> 
> The other things would be three different Maximoff playlists I have, which I shan't bore you with right now.

The protests, Wanda thinks, are all the same. No matter what they do - no matter how hard they try, how loud they scream, how much they plead, no one will ever listen. The world only listened long enough to send in NATO’s guns and Stark’s weapons. The politicians only listened to money - or those countries that would refuse it.

The people listened only to pleading and begging, the background noise of all their lives. Novi Grad, the dying capital of a dying country, it’s people dying in the streets.

“No more NATO!” they cry. “No more, no more!”

No more bombed buildings. No more innocents dead. No more NATO soldiers offering their patronage for as long as they stay - but they are American and English, Polish and German, Czech and Italian, so proud and so self-superior. So ready to look down on them. Even Estonia, so near and yet so far, is infested with them.

Infested - they do not ask for this. Sokovia has bases here there and everywhere full of people who are not Sokovian, who do not even wish to be. There is a difference, Wanda knows. There is a difference between Aaliyah at the market, wearing a headscarf that is not so different to what Oma once wore, and the NATO soldier with his great grand gun. There is a difference between Austrian Katarina who will let Wanda work shifts around her schooling, offer use of her shower and her washing machine to children she knows survive on the streets of Sokovia, and the Stark-run shelters, the homes supposed to help them.

Supposed to. The twins have seen all of Stark’s help that they need to - a bomb, a flickering light, their father’s leg in the chasm below, twitching.

Mother’s blood on the rubble. Stark no more making weapons - except for himself.

The twins hold their banner, raise their fists and scream their protestations at the world.

 

* * *

 

School is…

School is pale corridors, rust on the hinges, lockers that never stay shut. School books, bright and shiny-new, but in English and not Sokovian, a Latin alphabet and not the familiar Cyrillic. School is teachers trying as best they can to teach a Sokovian curriculum from an English textbook made by Americans.

The world around them, colonised by world powers, so pleased and proud of themselves that they will never let go.

They learn about the Berlin wall - how long it took Russia and America and all the rest to give it back to the Berliners. To give Germany back to itself. How, even now, the divide persists in subtle and insidious ways - east and west, old and new, consumer and keeper.

Wanda wonders if this is to be Sokovia’s fate, if they speak out too much. She wonders if it is already their fate, infested as they are with soldiers not their own, who march their streets and keep their peace - and never ask what it is Sokovia wants or needs.

 

* * *

 

 _An intervention_ , they called it.  _Peacekeeping._

Wanda wonders how many other children have been orphaned by  _peace._

 

* * *

 

Pietro’s shoulder bumps against hers as they walk down the corridor. They are crammed close in the halls - for so many students it is the closest thing to a safe place they know. It is this or the shelters, this or the few crumbling homes that yet stand upright. This or the churches or the synagogues - but the twins will not go to temple any longer. Not since their parents died, not since the world took from innocents and took and took and took and never thought to give any small thing back no matter how hard they tried.

The twins have claimed each other as their own, each other as their home. They walk down the halls of their crumbling school, let their shoulders brush together in the press of bodies, and are glad that here, in this one place, they do not have to hide the affection that keeps them anchored and sane.

Their fingers brush by each other, squeeze gently before letting go. A deep breath. A straightened shoulder. A taller stance.

They part ways, and head to the next class.

They wonder how much more of their world is going to be taken from them now.

 

* * *

 

The castle at the edge of the city is inhabited; this they know. They know more, too: that it is filled with SHIELD, founded by the Starks and their friends, powered by American pride, and unknowable funding, and no one truly knows its purpose or it’s intent. They know: it is filled with as many soldiers as the bases, and not one of them Sokovian.

Were it an embassy, they might accept it. Were it base for peace, it would not be such a weight, another straw on the back of a camel already overburdened.

But it is a base of soldiers, hidden on a rise just beyond the brink of the city and they wonder how long it will be before their soldiers fill Sokovia’s streets. How long before another piece of Sokovia is truly taken from itself.

 

* * *

 

They hide in the church in the centre of town, come sunset. They have ever since they ran from the fourth foster family. Home was home, with parents and love. The orphanage was bleak but bright - full of children who knew the pain of loss just as keenly as they did. The fosters were something else, and the fourth, the two split apart… they fled it, gladly, and the whole system with it.

“To hide in a church,” Pietro had said, half-laughing in sighed amusement.

“We do not believe anymore,” Wanda replied. “Not in anything.”

“Nothing but ourselves.”

Jewish children of a Roma mother hiding in a destroyed Catholic church. Wanda thinks there is something almost amusing in it, if they cared to find it.

Pietro’s hand catches hers as they step through the rusted metal fence, over the fallen rubble of it. The council has said, over and over, that they will bulldoze it or raise it anew, preserve it as part of the city’s heritage or replace it with some grand improvement to mark Sokovia the equal of England or America.

Wanda knows they never will.

Pietro’s fingers are gentle on hers, his skin callused but careful, asking only what she cares to give. Her hand is firm on his, taking gladly the comfort he offers.

“I hate it,” he whispers, setting his bag down in the corner. “I hate all of it.”

Wanda squeezes her brother’s fingers, smiles sadly at him. “We learn,” she says. “Because if we know what it is we fight-”

Her brother nods, dark curls bobbing in the wind. “We have a better chance to win.”

 

* * *

 

A protest for this and a protest for that. For the soldiers gone, for the streets to be fixed. For the shelters to be Sokovia’s duty to Sokovia’s children, not Stark paying away his guilt or a charity fixing what their government will not. A protest against corruption, against bribery, against NATO, damned NATO, needling it’s way in.

Against this, against that, until all their anger and their fury merges into one.

Pietro follows Wanda to the protests, close on her heels, her ever-present watcher and protector. Wanda finds the protest, finds the blood of it, the burning, beating heart, and raises her fists.

They scream, they wail, they chant.  _No more._

 

* * *

 

There is no hush when the man steps out of the crowd, soldiers at his back. White lab coat - pristine against the ruin and rubble of the streets of Novi Grad - sleek soldiers and shiny guns. The crowd only yells louder.

The man smiles, and waits.

“You would see,” he says, voice clear, “Your country made great again. Free of the meddling fingers of other men, other nations.”

A falling quiet goes suddenly dead.

“We offer that,” he says. “We have the means to make you mighty. To give you the strength of Stark’s suits, to give you a shield as strong as Captain America’s.” He lifts his chin, looks down towards the whole crowd fallen silent and hanging on his every word, his whispered promise. “We are SHIELD,” he says. “And we would see all countries equal - and all countries great again.”

 

* * *

 

There is a worry in this man’s promise, some creeping fear, and Wanda lingers back, even as she is dragged forwards by her hands around Pietro’s arm.

“Wanda,” he says, eyes bright, smile beaming. “They said - what they promise-”

“It’s a lie,” she whispers. “It’s got to be. Why would they offer it to us?”

“I don’t care,” Pietro says, shaking his head. “Think of it! We could finally fight back. Finally have vengeance!”

Her brother’s face is bright and beautiful, eager as it only is when there is a fight, some chance to prove himself, bright only as it is in memories, all the way back to before they were ten, when their family was whole, their home intact. When he is like this - hopeful, joyful - she dares not deny him.

“We would sign up,” she says to the man. “How?”

 

* * *

 

The man hisses through his teeth when they hand the clipboards back. “We can’t,” he says. “I’m so sorry, but you’re  _children._ We can’t.”

Pietro, tall at her shoulder, doesn’t flinch. “We have not been children since we were ten. Since the bombs killed our parents. If anyone seeks to make this country safe again-”

“I know,” the man says, some earnestness in his tone. “I  _know._ Do you know how many children like you I have seen over the years? How many I wished I could help?” He closes his eyes, sighs, tucks the forms into a folder. “But I can’t. You’re not adults, you have no guardians to permit it in your stead. Maybe in a few years - when you turn eighteen. But we can’t.” He turns as though to leave, one hand running through thinning hair.

“We have  _no one left,”_ snarls Pietro.  _“No one._ And you would offer us such hope only to steal it back?”

The man looks at them, Pietro leaning forward, only restrained by his sister’s hand.

“We’ve had no one else since we were ten years old,” Wanda says. “We have been to every protest, to every riot, every skirmish we can to fight for this. We are as adult as any of them.” She jerks her chin in the direction of the others, loading up onto mud-splattered trucks.

 _“Please,”_ Pietro says.

The man shakes his head, and walks away.

 

* * *


	2. What might we have, to call our own?

There is a seething anger in Wanda’s belly when they curl to sleep that night. She knows she should know better - that she should not have been sucked in by the false hope offered, should have known that after all the cruelty the world has shown it would not ever show them kindness. She knows that it is likely all lies, that there is nothing they can offer, knows there was some other motive for the man to steal people away and convince them it was all their idea. She knows this.

And yet, anger still curls in her gut.

Pietro’s arms wrap around her shoulders, her ear is pressed against his chest. There is comfort in this - when angry or sad, when fearful or worrying. Curling as they did in the rubble, did by the shell, the sheer comfort of knowing that they survived that, they’ve survived this - that they can and will survive so much more. Wanda feels her brother’s heartbeat under her hand, his arms around her shoulders. Her feet tuck up, Pietro’s knees beneath her toes and they blanket themselves in coats and jumpers and scarves to better ward away the biting chill of wintry winds.

“I hate them,” she whispers. She feels Pietro’s lips against her scalp, the softest kiss.

“I know,” he says. “I hate them too.”

There is nothing for them here. Wanda wonders: has there ever been? From the moment they lost their parents, what have they had? A home destroyed, parents gone. Family far away. The most they have ever had has been each other, each other and their vengeance.

As Pietro’s breathing evens out, as the noises of the city grow quieter and more sparse, she watches the flickering, fading flames of a fire in the square through the cracked walls and failing fence.

What does Novi Grad offer them any longer? What can it give them? It failed to give them shelter, it is the grave of their parents. The only strength they have been offered in six long years has been held from them, offered and redacted in one fell swoop.

Wanda watches the flames and thinks:  _There is nothing for us here._

 

* * *

 

Sokovia, Wanda remembers, is a country of lengths, not of breadths. It is a narrow barrier, a fine line between two or four or six other countries - the maps changing so often in its early years, it’s borders changing that the whole language is a pidgin of German and Serbian, Hungarian and Russian, Czech and Polish and the English the soldiers brought with them.

It is a country neither here nor there, a capital nestled in the mountains, the country spreading down a valley until more prosperous nations hemmed it in and claimed the rest. A liminal country. A country that should not be.

The twins make their way down from the city. They cross the bridge from the old city to the new, the castle in the mountains at their back.  _A canker,_ Wanda says.  _An emblem of everything wrong with our country. Our history and our heritage claimed by foreigners and outsiders who claim they wish to help, but offer nothing to our needy hands._

Pietro thinks she is getting far too adept at understanding the language of the revolutionaries, the language of the rebels. Pietro thinks that soon she will speak of revolution, and people will follow.

Pietro thinks,  _She is like Papa was, with the Union strikes._

When they reach the edge of the city they almost look back - at the bridges and the gates, at the castle looming above. Wanda sighs, hunches her shoulders, and keeps walking. Pietro pauses. Considers. Looks at those walking and driving in and out of Novi Grad around them.

And he follows his sister into the valley.

 

* * *

 

There is rage in her heart, there always is. Pietro sometimes imagines he can see it, glowing out from between her ribs, bright as fire, flame or a supernova. If her heart is a star, then his is a hummingbird - ever unsettled, ever awaiting movement.

Travelling, though…. Something seems to calm in his chest. There is something peaceful in travel, in removing themselves from the looming danger of the city that has always been home to them. The city was their home, yes, but it was a home afire, a home at risk, a home… a home crumbling down around them while they huddled in the wreckage.

To suddenly be out from under it is like their first breath of air after the two days they spent trapped in rubble.

He does not know if Wanda had sensed the upset the city was giving them. Does not know if it was an instinctive move. Does not know the whys and wherefores, but, he thinks, he does not need to - Wanda guides their path, all her witch wisdom and witch magic like their mother’s. She  _knows_ in a way he cannot, the same way that has always made her wary of new hope when it is offered, even though she, like he, hopes with all her heart.

In the end, it does not matter. They breathe fresh air, and walk down between bright grassy fields.

 

* * *

 

Later, they remember this: there was a barn, and a fire, and they ran.

In the moment, it was something else.

 

* * *

 

There is fire at his sister’s fingertips. Fire or… it is not blood, it cannot be. It moves like smoke, is red as embers or as blood, is bright and burning and fierce and lashing and it is the only thing holding the flames back from engulfing them, the only thing preventing the smoke from choking them.

Wanda glances to him, eyes glowing with light.

“Wanda,” he whispers, and it is as though the world is slow, so slow, as though he is hurtling in panic and fear and anger as he does every time that he fights. His heart is fast against his ribs - a hummingbird where her’s is a burning star and he cups his face in her hands in a moment.

“How?”

She shakes her head, eyes still bright as flames, still glowing redder even than her shawl.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Her hands are twisting nervously, scarlet spewing from her fingertips, cascading down from her wrists, the same bright red as her eyes. “I can’t hold the fire back.”

Pietro does as he has only done once before in all their lives, and gathers his sister in his arms.

 

* * *

 

When they stop, they are two miles away, hidden beneath an oak tree. They have two of their three bags - the third, school books and spare scarves, a black jumper they shared and some spare food, is burned to ash - and they huddle together in the shade of the tree, Wanda’s hands scarlet and Pietro....

Pietro is shaking into blue.

 

* * *

 

“What-”

“I don’t know.” Wanda is staring at her hands. When she is not replying to Pietro’s one-word questions she is muttering to herself in Hebrew and Roma, in Sokovian and German, even the little true Polish Papa had taught them that was not mingled into their mixed up native tongue. She stares at her hands, at the scarlet spewing from her fingertips, gathering at her wrists and knuckles, rising out of the skin of her forearms like a spiderweb in the breeze.

“Wanda-”

_“I don’t know.”_

Pietro is shuddering against the tree. He’s never been able to stay still, always too eager, always moving, always wanting something to do. He’s always been the one finding them food or new clothes, listening to the gossip that Wanda cannot, or does not care to listen to, always finding out when other protests are going on when Wanda is helping the children of the streets find shelter.

But he’s never shaken so much he has become edged in blue and silver.

Wanda tears her eyes from her hands, watches her brother. She reaches out with a hand cloaked in scarlet, touches his arm. She can feel how, beneath her hand, he is trembling fast as a fly’s wings.

She draws in a breath, thinks back to what Mama used to say when making the little charms she would hang in the window.

 _First,_ Mama would say.  _You must find yourself._

Wanda lets out a breath and focusses on her ribs, feels how they sink down. She draws a breath in, feels the air around her heart, lets her shoulders lift. In and out, and in and out until the scarlet is pulsing with her breath - in and out of her hands until she draws a long breath in and the scarlet disappears.

“Eyes are still red,” Pietro says between shudders.

“That doesn’t matter,” Wanda whispers, stroking a hand along his cheek. “If I can do this-” she gestures with a hand - no scarlet, ordinary as anything - “Then you can too. We are the same, we two. We Maximoffs. We have each other-”

“We have each other,” Pietro says, latching onto the litany he had whispered so long ago in the rubble. “We have each other, and that’s all we’ll ever need.”

Wanda’s hand stays, gentle on his cheek, fingers brushing gently over the skin as Pietro breathes in and out, shudders slowing and slowing and-

Gone.

 

* * *

 

They don’t speak about it as they pick up their bags. They don’t say a word. They take each other’s hands in firm grips, and walk - not sprint in blue or float in scarlet - towards the next village.

 

* * *

 


	3. What is ours we claim

They hide…. Whatever it is. They tuck the blue and scarlet of their terror into their skin, hide the tension in his muscles, tuck the scarlet up into her ribcage. When it comes spewing out in nightmares, Pietro rolling around in such speed he falls down a ladder, when Wanda’s scarlet sets things floating, they wake the other, talk each other down, focus on whatever it is is happening until they are anchored again, until whatever it is is gone and calm.

Then, they try to find it again, summon it out and tuck it back away, so they know that they can.

For a moment, each night and nightmare, they look to each other, and fear.

 

* * *

 

The world around them changes. The fields turn from green to gold, the valley widens. They know, if they keep walking, they will leave Sokovia. Neither is entirely sure if they want that. There is something terrifying in the idea of leaving behind all that they’ve ever known, but they’ve already done that, leaving Novi Grad, and in the face of that this is but one more small fear they might conquer.

Sometimes, when they walk down towards the road, they look up into the distant mountains, and think of the city that was their home.

 

* * *

 

Villages are painful for Wanda now. Neither of them quite understand why - something about the  _people,_ something extra in her sight, all scarlet and greyscale and skittering around the edges so she can barely focus until one night she wakes not from her own nightmares but Pietro’s.

“Wanda,” he says. “You’re a witch.”

She half-scowls at him, eyes like embers, and he smiles only wider.

“You’re in my head,” he says. “Concentrate, what number am I thinking of?”

Wanda sighs, closes her eyes, focusses. In the greyscale space she can see-not-see, her brother is bright and blue, not the scarlet sparks or echoes of other colours that spring from other people. She does not know if this is minds. Maybe it is life, or energy, or  _souls,_ but she did see her brother’s nightmare and wake from it and wake him, so-

“Twelve,” she says.

“Twelve minutes  _older_ than you,” he says, and she cannot help her smile. His hand is gentle on hers. “You’re a telepath,” he says. “That is the word, yes?”

It is. Wanda nods. Pietro turns her hand over in his, gently smoothing her hand flat and loose, all the muscles starting to relax.

“You can see minds, then,” he says. “And you could feel my nightmare, and share it.” He pauses, considers. “Do you think that you could send the nightmares away?”

 

* * *

 

They practice. The towns and villages are few and far between, especially as they avoid the other cities, and any town bigger than it’s marketplace.

Wanda learns the feel of her brother’s mind, all the subtleties of it, the blue breezes that whizz around the outer and the vast tree at its core, the monkeys and birds that find their way throughout his tree, among his vines, and watch down over great waters of firmament beneath. She learns her  _own_ mind, a synagogue shape hidden by the church they hid in for those two years, pebble-settled burials hidden in a corner, the one place she can memorialise their parents.

Something in learning their two minds… helps. Wanda builds a bridge between them, a perfect understanding even better than the simple, single knowing they have alway shared before. Something of it is an anchor, an even stronger one than breathing, than Mama’s words,  _First, you must find yourself._

Wanda finds herself, and with it, Wanda finds her brother.

Together, they fight their nightmares, fight their fears, and start to visit the villages again.

 

* * *

 

Survival has ever been half a game to Pietro. Wanda thinks, sometimes, that he does not care if he survives, so long as she does. He will throw himself in harm’s way a thousand times, no matter that she asks him not to, but as soon as she is at risk he will whisk them away in a moment. Now, with these strange powers, survival has become yet more of a game to him. He uses his speed to juggle, stealing fruit off stalls, making a show, earning some pennies before returning most - but not all - of the fruit. Sometimes he pays the stall owner. Sometimes he simply flees.

Wanda does not use her powers, not if she can help it. She will sense minds and steer them away, will offer advice and guidance to those who ask it of her in the small way a traveller may ask another traveller. But the villages and towns would not care for the show she could put on, and so the most power she shows is the glow of her eyes as she tries desperately to hold it in, to hold it back, when someone threatens them.

As they get ever-nearer the border, they find stories of the red-eyed witch, the fortune teller and the phantom in blue, the quicksilver shadow, have only spread and grown.

 

* * *

 

They are near the border when it happens - fears have circled her mind like Pietro’s winds that this might occur, sometimes even drifted to join his hurricane, but it has not slowed his reckless pace.

They wake, one morning, to the barrels of guns.

 

* * *

 

“Red Witch, Silver Demon. Hello kiddies.”

There’s a woman there, and behind her, two men and a woman with a scarred face. Pietro is blurring at the edges, Wanda’s eyes glow with scarlet. At a wave from the woman, they lower the guns.

“Now,” she says, “We don’t want a fight, but we’d like to discuss…” she waves a hand at them, Wanda’s red eyes, Pietro limned in blue. “This.” The twins glance to each other, grip each other’s hands beneath the blanket they shared. “And,” the woman continues. “If you’re interested, we’d like to give you a job.”

 

* * *

 

“Can we trust them?” Pietro asks, as soon as they’re given some space. The woman - Urszula Svobodová - and her team are further down the hill, the twins standing beneath the tree they’d slept under, packing the blanket into a bag, tucking away toothbrushes and the water bottle they shared. “Wanda. Their minds - can we trust them?”

Wanda stares off down the slope, let's red fill her eyes until the vague minds at the bottom are as clear as crystal to her.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I think so.”

“They didn’t help before. Sokovia… the government, it’s corrupt. They never tried to help us or anyone before. Wanda, are you  _sure?”_

Wanda turns her scarlet gaze to him, and for a moment he sees the witch that the thugs in the towns fear so much. “Before,” she says. “They could barely help themselves. I can see their minds, Pietro.” She looks back down the hill. “Yes, I am sure.”

 

* * *

 


	4. A Place and A Purpose

The team is… it is odd. They did not think that anyone under the government’s thumb could truly care for the people of their country, and yet-

“We are people of this country,” Urszula says. “Every one of us. We’ve all suffered due to the actions of other people and other nations. They want power over us and use our inability to claim the right to rule us instead - Russia, America, Britain. And NATO will let them leave just enough chaos to justify the peacekeeping that makes such self-congratulatory press, just enough they can excuse their persisting presence even as the people cry for them to leave, cry for justice for our poor liminal nation. They do not care for the people their peacekeeping is supposed to save, and they convince the politicians not to care either, anything for a little more money in their pockets and power in their greedy-grubbing fists.

“There are those,” she admits, “high up, who want nothing more than safety and power for themselves, who accept every bribe for if they take nothing they think they  _have_ nothing. But there are few, a precious scattered few, who would see Sokovia be more than a client kingdom to the mighty of the world.”

 

* * *

 

They learn the little skills of intel. Being invisible, combing feeds of information. How to hide one self underneath another, how to tease information out of people.

“Why do I need to?” Wanda asks. “I can… with a little effort, I can  _see_ people’s minds. Their thoughts, memories, dreams, imaginings. I can make them tell me the truth with focus and a flick of my finger.”

“You’re impatient,” Tomasz says. “Like your brother.”

Katrin kneels before Wanda, the scar on her face a clean line from the side of her eye, down her cheek, tearing at the corner of her mouth. “You need to,” she says, “Because if you make people trust you then you can learn what they want over a longer period of time. You can understand them. You can learn how best to stop them, or guide them or trick them. You can learn how to  _hurt_ them.”

“And,” Tomasz says, “Sometimes, you may not be able to use something as obvious as your powers.”

 

* * *

 

They train with Katrin and Tomasz and barely see Urszula or her companion.

“You’re powerful,” Tomasz says, teaching Pietro how to spar slowly so he can be even more deadly in his speed. “Both of you. But you can’t rely on powers when you don’t know how they work or why. It’s like relying on luck.”

 

* * *

 

One morning they wake up, and Urszula packs them into the back of a truck.

“What’s going on?” Wanda asks as they rattle up the valley. This close to the border as they are they could be going to almost anywhere in the country; Derenk or Bardowiek, Czerwona Woda or Kłomino, or, far off up the valley, nestled into the crux of the mountains, the capital. Novi Grad.

“New marching orders,” says Mark, Urszula’s ever present intel-for-intel companion. “Colonel Zemo needs us.”

Even Tomasz and Katrin frown at that. They speak in unison: “For what?

 

* * *

 

Novi Grad, when they arrive there, is unchanged. The city is a mixture of rubble, old crumbling towers and new replacements. The church is still ringed around with rusted fencing, the synagogue still has fresh paint over last night’s scrawled on slogans, the castle still looms like a clinging parasite in it’s nest above the city.

“They’ve been coming down for more volunteers,” says Mark, nodding up at the castle as Tomasz drives them carefully through busy streets. “But no one has seen the ones they collected before.”

The twins glance to each other. “If no one has seen them,” Wanda says, “Then they are dead.”

“That is the fear,” Mark says. “Especially with the intel Zemo’s gained.”

 

* * *

 

They’ve heard of Zemo. Wanda sees the name slinking through Urszula’s mind like a slithering ghost, hiding here and there. Sometimes, Urszula fudges a report, just slightly, so it’s not brought to Zemo’s attention.

“He runs a kill squad,” she says when Wanda asks. “Anyone who might upset what little peace Sokovia has - one of our own attempts at peacekeeping.”

It chills Wanda, that reminder that, sometimes, even their own country might kill its own people. It should not surprise her so, should not chill her. She knows the corruption that riddles her country like woodworm in old beams. She knows the desperation brought from subjugation. She knows just how many people would kill those they deemed too extreme if they thought - even slightly - that being able to keep their own peace might force the nations infesting them to leave.

Wanda knows, too, that they won’t. America, Russia, all of NATO… they crave power over Sokovia, over  _anything_ , at least as much as Sokovia craves power over itself, and they have far more firepower, far more money, to back themselves up.

 

* * *

 

Zemo’s office, such that it is, is sparse. A desk, two filing cabinets, two framed commendations and a photo of family. Urszula nods, takes the waved-at seat.

“Colonel,” she says. “You know most of my squad already - Mark András, Tomasz Kocur, Katrin Čierná.” The Colonel nods and Urszula turns to gesture to the twins. “These are my new finds. Wanda and Pietro.”

“The enhanced.”

Urszula nods. They’re still none of them entirely sure what has given the twins their powers, but  _enhanced_ remains the simplest label. Enhanced from human baseline.

Zemo picks up a pen from his desk, rolls it between his fingers. “In a week the Avengers will be coming here in order to approach the castle. Due to its continued running since the Battle over the Potomac and its failure to report to those few accepted as honest SHIELD agents since the fall of that organisation, as well as the human experimentation, we have reason to believe the base there is not SHIELD but HYDRA.”

The room seems to freeze. In Pietro’s mind there is brief confusion until Wanda sends over a simple image - the badge of HYDRA that they’d been shown in school, and, beside it, the badge they’d hated and feared all their childhood.

 _Nazis,_ Pietro thinks.  _They were…_

Wanda’s hand grips his tight.  _I’m glad we were not accepted._

 

* * *

 

Zemo lays out the plan for approaching the castle. Which Avengers will be coming (all of them, barring last minute injury), how it’s being handled (combined effort to show Sokovia to be honest and not corrupt) and what their goals are.

He even lays out the story, such as they have it - the Sceptre captured, studied, stolen by suborned scientists and… vanished.

“It is one of the last remaining bases,” he says. “According to the Avengers. And we know they have claimed to be able to give people power, have recruited many volunteers for human experimentation. We have reason to believe that, if it is anywhere, the Sceptre is here.”

He rolls a pen across the desk, fingers a light pressure on it. “The Avengers are coming. We cannot take the castle ourselves - not even with you,” he says, looking at the twins. “We need them,” he says, and they all of them seethe, bridle at the sense of being lacking.

 

* * *

 

As they file out of the briefing, Zemo calls their names. Well…

“Wanda,” he specifies, when both pause at the call of their surname. “Just Wanda.”

Pietro looks to his sister, squeezes her hand when she nods, and slips outside in a split of silver. The link between their minds is strong and scarlet. Sacred and unbreakable.

“Agent Maximoff,” says Zemo. “You have not been with us long.”

Wanda is silent a moment before; “Technically,” she says. “I’m not with you at all. Urszula hasn’t submitted us for full training yet, and we’re underage.”

Zemo waves a hand. “Fudging ages is nothing. Agent Svobodová hus fudged many details for sake of people she thinks would be better off alive, or on our side.”

Down their bond Pietro can feel his sister pursing her lips, the sensation of her hair against her neck as she nods. There is something unspoken here, something he cannot read with the way he has bound himself around his sister, her eternal shield and guard.

Wanda though…. Wanda understands.

“You have another mission,” Zemo says, tapping the tip of an unclicked pen against paper. “You must not tell the others.”

Wanda bites her tongue, does not tell Zemo that whatever she knows Pietro knows, their minds interlinked, their purposes bound together with all they trauma they share.

She does not tell him:  _to tell me is to tell my brother._

She bites her tongue. (Some part of them, still, does not trust authority.)

“Stark is a man bound by guilt. The released SHIELD files included a psychological evaluation: narcissist, but driven by guilt. We need you to exacerbate that. We know you can do what one one else can, to make him feel guilt with your ...abilities.” Zemo pauses, considers his next words before continuing. “We need you to make him care about what happens to us for collaborating with them. We need you to make him give us something to set us free from NATO and America and Russia. From all those nations which would make us ours.”

His eyes are piercing and purposeful as they watch Wanda and even Pietro can feel the way his gaze crawls over their skin.

“Help us,” Zemo says, and it echoes back to what Urszula had said to them, that pleading that all their powers be used for the country they know, the liminal land they call home. “Help us,” Zemo says. “ Work with us. For all of us, all of Sokovia. Make us strong again. Make us free.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda thinks later, curled against Pietro in their assigned rooms, that there was never even a choice.

 

* * *

 


	5. an enemy and yet a friend

Wanda holds her secret within her and only Pietro can see its truth.

A binding order, an order she wants more than anything to complete.

 _Vengeance,_ she sings to Pietro.  _We have it, in the palms of our hands._

 _Ordered,_ Pietro says, amazed.  _They give us this, freely._

An order to bind Tony Stark to make amends.

 _Our parents avenged,_ thinks Pietro.

 _Our country saved,_ thinks Wanda.

 _All we have lived through, justified,_ they think together.

Wanda stands and waits for the Avengers to arrive, scarlet falling from twitching fingers like smoke.

 

* * *

 

Introductions are made - Zemo shakes the Captain’s hand, nods to him, introduces himself and his team, nods out introductions to each of those then - his team and Urszula’s, the twins last but never least.

“These,” he says, “Are Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Enhanced.”

In the corner, Wanda and Pietro stand, hand in firm hand, Wanda’s scarlet falling from her free fingertips in glows and sparks, curlicuing spirals falling to the floor like inverted plumes of smoke - it's controlled, managed, but it is more scarlet than she’d let out in anxiety at any time before.

 _Hope,_ she whispers to Pietro’s mind.

 _Vengeance,_ he sings, blue and silver limning his body as he holds in his urge to protect.

The Captain frowns. “Enhanced how?”

“Unknown,” says Zemo, calmly. “Even they do not know.” He glances back at the twins, at their fingers, intertwined tight and tense. “But they are powerful.”

This, they know, is true enough.

 

* * *

 

The castle looms above the city like a nit in the hairline, like a flea clinging to skin, rich with blood, fat with feed.

They are going to pry it off, clinging feeding jaws and all.

 

* * *

 

The woods are cold, white snow, grey trees, sky bleak and blue and cold above them.

“It is your colours,” Wanda laughs.

Pietro smiles, feeds all his strength to her. His speed has grown beyond his scope- he cannot manage it without her, it is too much, it makes everything else meaningless if he does not feed the strength of it to her and so-

Wanda absorbs the power he feeds her, scarlet pouring from fingers and feet, half hovering, half humming.

They are children still. They look it, gaunt and small, though they do not act it (  _How could we act it?_ Asks Wanda of Pietro.  _After all we have seen?_ ). With their powers singing through their bodies, through their bones….

How can they not be desperate to make use of them?

 

* * *

 

The castle is a vast thing and a tiny one. Wanda’s mind spreads, tries to spot out every mind within it until it strains the muscles of her neck and brow to look and look and  _look_ beyond seeing.

Pietro sprints and runs and ducks and weaves, dodging bullets and people and taking out as many as he can.

At the rearguard Zemo’s squad and Urszula’s kill or capture those who try to flee.

 

* * *

 

They move forward, inexorably. The Avengers are well-trained, well-grouped, know well how to fight together, use their skills in combination - Thor’s hammer on the Captain’s shield, a targeted blast down the path to take out truck and people but leave the rooted trees standing. Even the Hulk, all vast anger and stretching rage, only emerges when called, when the missiles and bunkers the castle has kept hidden until now emerge into play.

They are holding the field when two people, hand in hand, fly out of the castle.

 

* * *

 

“What the  _fuck_ was that?” says the Captain over comms.

“Language,” taunts Stark.

“Not the time,” the Widow cuts in. “What  _was_ that?”

Above them, the figures of two people, hand in hand, are sending out blasts of power and beams that -

“Shit!” Stark says, and he is falling, the armour around one leg fading and crumbling. “JARVIS, send me a clean suit. They have enhanced here too.”

 

* * *

 

 _Flying,_ Wanda sends to Pietro.  _We cannot-_

_You can._

Wanda huffs a laugh.  _I_ ** _hurtle_  ** _. It’s different._

Pietro ploughs through three men, dodges around the back of a very angry Hulk, and ducks the falling damaged set of Iron Man armour as Stark’s invisible JARVIS sends an intact suit in.

 _Maybe,_ Pietro sends.  _But you are stronger than them._

They don’t know this, not for certain, but Pietro’s certainty is adamant.

Thor is already hurtling towards the pair in the sky, dodging concussive blasts, and striking out with lightning as Wanda pushes herself into the air with all her might. It’s wobbly this, she’s not had much practice and beneath her her scarlet rebels at being used so simply, so tamely. A reactive shield, a thrown blast, these things are that which come easily but this, a controlled lift… that is something new.

“Face recognition!” Stark calls. “Andrea and Andreas von Strucker. Baron von Strucker’s kids.” There’s a pause and Wanda hurls a net of scarlet out, holding herself up as best she can and trying to ensnare the pair’s legs at once. “They’re not on SHIELD’s List of enhanced,” Stark continues. “What’s the bet their father fucked with their genes?”

“Sucker’s bet!” replies the Widow. Through comms Wanda can hear the crunch of snow from the Widow - close enough she must have rolled or ducked, and then she can’t focus on that and drops herself, catching herself on a tree and pushing off again, as a blast is aimed at her.

“Thor,” Wanda says, and her English is stuttered and imperfect, but the god hears her words all the same. “Get them to the ground and my brother and I can deal with them.”

Thor’s strikes become faster, and Wanda cannot focus on her brother’s mind, no, but she tugs him close, directs him towards her while creating a great cupping hand of scarlet, looping around to catch the von Strucker’s ankles and legs, to wrap over their heads as Thor sends lightning bolt after lightning bolt, hurled hammer, after hurled self at the pair, driving them downwards.

And they fall right into her net.

Wanda sends out darts of scarlet, curls a shield over her brother as he skids into the small clear patch. Thor rails down lightning from above, great clear blasts, as blindingly pale as the snow, as Pietro’s speed. Wanda keeps her shields, up, keeps them all safe from the pair’s attacks, but cannot send back blasts, cannot let people through her shields but her brother.

 _Let me,_ Pietro says,  _I can-_

_I’m not risking you. You saw what they did to Stark’s suit._

_Don’t risk me then,_ he sends.  _Can you take their minds?_

 _I…_ Wanda pauses, watches the pair. Their minds are bare, showing more and more panic and worry, doubt in their great power as they cannot break the shields Wanda refreshes moment to moment, throws up in the face of each blast she glimpses forthcoming.  _Yes._

At her side, Pietro grins. Then, he is a blur of blue. “Thor,” he says, and he runs so fast no one could read his lips, no one could hear him but down the comms, and it is only Wanda’s mind in his that allows him to speak so slowly while running so fast. “Keep them distracted. Wanda will-”

And as Thor sends down a blast so flickering and strong it is half-blinding, Wanda engulfs their minds.

 

* * *

 

_Liars!_

_Waste!_

_Wrong!_

_Traitors!_

_We are right!_

_We are true!_

_HYDRA_

**_HYDRA_ **

_WE RISE AGAIN_

**_Hail-_ **

And their minds choke out in the wave of Wanda’s scarlet, their bodies falling to the ground.

 

* * *

 

Thor lands beside them, surprisingly soft on his feet. “Did you-”

“They’re unconscious,” Pietro says. “My sister would not-”

“They  _should_ be dead,” Wanda says, half hissing. The heel of her hand is pressed to her forehead and she’s blinking back stars from the lightning blast. “They are  _Nazis.”_

 

* * *

 

Around them the battles goes on. As soon as Wanda’s headache eases, Pietro plucks her up, carries her up to the castle where she is needed.

“Kid,” the Captain says to Pietro, watching SHIELD agents - true and real ones - and Sokovian squads push and pull HYDRA agents down the stairs. “You don’t need to-”

“This is our country,” Wanda says. “We must see this  _done.”_

And the Captain, slowly, nods and lets them pass.

 _Your mission,_ Pietro whispers to her mind.  _Your task. You mean to-_

 _It is our vengeance,_ Wanda sends back.  _Purpose and justice both._

 

* * *

 

Pietro sets her in silence at Stark’s shoulder, and watches as she pours fear and concern - for them, for Sokovia, for those who aided the Avengers and for those torn apart and taken advantage of by war - into his mind.

 

* * *

 


	6. lies and truths and layers between

They’re scooped into the Quinjet with Zemo and Urszula. Their teams - led by their seconds - will remain behind, manage the on-the-ground clean up with what has been salvaged of Sokovia’s government, the few who are as little-corrupted as possible.

“You were essential,” Stark says, gregarious and almost boisterous. “Of  _course_ you’re part of the party. You’re old enough to drink right?”

“In Sokovia,” Pietro says. “America, though-”

Iron Man waves a suited hand  _pish posh._ “If it’s fine here, it’s fine there. It’s not like I wasn’t drinking from fifteen.”

The twins glance to each other and share a look.

 

* * *

 

Iron Man sheds his suit, takes the pilot’s seat. He’s quiet once he’s invited everyone to the party, sorts things with his invisible JARVIS to prepare a party, get a Doctor Cho in to check everyone over. Wanda can see the scarlet tint in his mind - not her scarlet, no, but the dread and fear, concern and guilt that is an ever-raw part of him, edged over by festering gold like a sore, like his suit. All that fear, all that concern she dripped into his mind like blood, and now it is slowly changing him, and his thoughts.

She leans her head against her brother’s shoulder, and sleeps.

 

* * *

 

By the time they wake it’s almost evening, and they’re being shaken awake by Urszula.

“Everyone but you two’ve been checked over,” she says. “Do you need-”

“We’re fine,” Pietro says. “Wanda would not let me be hurt and-”

“Pietro would not let me be hurt.”

Urszula smiles at them - she’s always seemed to like how they check on each other, ensure one another’s wellbeing enough to make them functional assets independent of the whole team when needs be.

“It’s almost party time,” Urszula says. “The interim President of Sokovia will be here shortly and Zemo and I are to supplement his protection detail until he leaves. They have clothes for you, if you want to smarten up.”

This is not a suggestion, but it is not an order either. Pietro stands, half-pulling Wanda upright.

“Where?” he asks, scooping Wanda into his arms in a moment.

 

* * *

 

The party is….

 _“Americans,”_ Wanda half-hisses. It’s ostentatious and showy, people everywhere, too much alcohol that is too fancy and to good for people to simply get drunk on. Stark circles, making friends and talking to old ones, the Captain walking side by side with a man who arrived while the twins were figuring out what of the clothes they were offered were ones they would actually wear.

(Pietro thinks that, from the moment they woke up, the only time Wanda has smiled was when invisible JARVIS complimented her choice of clothes.)

 _(“A most flattering combination,”_ JARVIS had said, and Pietro is half-certain it is just courtesy, but when courtesy has so long been scarce he will not take pleasure at it from his sister’s hands.)

They circle the party half-nervously, watching the Widow edge around the human-again Hulk, some careful plan like an oilslick on water over the smooth snowy plain of her mind. The archer watches from a high spot, content to not join the party but waving down at them when they nod up to him. He’s leaning against a beam, a drink held in one hand, his mind swirling purple and peaceful.

They sway through the party, dodging around drunks, and don’t join conversation until the Sokovian President has left and the party begins to wind down.

 

* * *

 

“So,” the Captain says. “What are your plans now?”

Urszula shrugs, makes a comment about returning to her team to oversee things, then looks to Zemo. Zemo details his plan to return home, check on his family, help the government - now free of HYDRA’s rot - to reform and renew, to help the people it’s so shamed.

“And you?” the Captain asks, looking to the twins.

They look to each other, to Urszula, and back to each other. They shrug. “I do not think the new government will let us stay on,” Wanda says, looking to Urszula. “You were only able to let us join because they were so corrupt they would let you lie.”

The Captain looks between them. “Lie?”

It’s Urszula who speaks, after a glance to a briefly nodding Zemo. “I recruited them,” she says. “When I learned of their powers I knew we needed all the help we could get and they recognised that too.” She shrugs, a single simple movement. “The government was willing to orphan children, and it had no problem employing them either.”

The Widow’s voice cuts like a shard of glass, as cold as ice.  _“What.”_

“You’re  _children?”_ asks Stark.

The Captain- “I figured you were young but-”

Pietro lifts his chin, bright blue eyes as piercing as ever. “We are sixteen - adult enough. And we have not been  _children_ since we were ten-” Wanda’s hand wraps around her brother’s, tugs gently, but he does not stop. “Not since we lost our parents, not since our home was  _destroyed-”_ and Wanda tugs her brother’s hand hard, steps forward and in that movement Pietro falls silent, falls back, lets his sister lead.

“We have not been children,” says Wanda, and turns, looks Stark in the eye. “Since we were ten years old, and two of your bombs destroyed our home and took our parents from us.”

And she wheels on her heel, her brother pulled willingly behind her, and they flee.

 

* * *

 

“Thats-”

Stark seems shocked, Natasha seems shaken, and Clint clambers down from his ceiling seat to take Natasha’s hand in his, rub a soothing circle on the back of her hand.

“You employed  _children,”_ Steve says to Svobodová and Zemo. “You- and you think that your country can no longer be corrupt?”

Urszula’s head is held high, Zemo’s shoulders back, his stance tall.

“They chose to join us,” Urszula says, proud, unbending, unwilling to break. “They could have left at any time - do you think we could have stopped them if they wanted to? They made that choice. Now, the fight over… we will help them have lives again. It is the least we can do for the help they have rendered us.”

“They’re  _children,”_ says Natasha.

“  _Traumatised_ children,” says Clint. “No one makes sensible decisions like that.”

“And you think that we could help them with the government as it was? Or any of the other hundreds, thousands, of children like them?” Zemo snaps. “Like this at least we may rebuild and offer those hurt help, even if we had to take two who were hurt to help us first.”

It’s Bruce who speaks next, speaks softly. “For the greater good,” he says.

Urszula looks at him, gaze softening. “We do not have your country’s freedom or power. We had to make decisions with what we had.”

 

* * *

 

“JARVIS?” asks Thor, drawing away from the debate, heading for the lifts. “Where are the Maximoffs?”

There is a hesitation from the AI before he responds. “Two levels below, sir,” he says. “The library. But they asked for peace and quiet, sir, I do not think-”

He waves one hand, sets his hammer down just outside the opening lift doors with the other. “I won’t make things worse,” he says gently. “I’ve been fighting since I was a boy as well.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda’s leaning into her brother’s shoulder, her eyes closed, Pietro’s arms around her back. They’re nestled in a seat between two bookshelves, just out of anyone’s sightlines. Wanda’s eyes flicker open, glow red, as they hear the whispering noise of the lift doors opening.

“It’s just me,” calls the godling, stepping out from between bookshelves, both hands in the air, no hammer in his hands. As she peers she can see it just behind him, to one side of the lift doors. In their seat, the twins half-relax.  “I’ve been fighting since I was small as well,” he says, leaning against a bookshelf. “Sparring mostly but I helped with some of the disputes on Vanaheim when I was… roughly around fifteen and a half, in equivalent.” He waves a hand expansively. “Asgardians age slower than you do.”

The twins relax more, the scarlet easing out of Wanda’s eyes. She even moves to sit up, shrugging her brother’s arms away. Instead, they interlink their fingers, knuckles white, thumbs tracing patterns on each other’s skin.

“You do not judge Urszula, then,” Wanda says. “For letting us join.”

“Better her,” Thor says bluntly, “Than HYDRA.”

Wanda’s smile is as sharp as a knife.

 

* * *

 

They’re talking in the library when the lights flicker. Thor stands, lifts a hand, his hammer flying to him, thrumming.

“JARVIS?” he asks.

The only noise to come from invisible JARVIS is a garbled mess of static.

“Something is wrong,” the godling says. “We need to-”

“Take the window,” Wanda says. “Stark can afford to have it fixed, yes? There’s a stairwell that way-” she nods towards a door tucked in the corner, her eyes glowing. “My brother will get us up to the party.”

She’s already reaching for Pietro as Thor nods, hammer thrumming. As Pietro blurs them into blue, Thor smashes through the window.

 

* * *

 


	7. a hope and a danger

Whatever crashed out of the tower, whatever has put the frighteners on Tony Stark, the team does not know what to do.

“We should leave,” Zemo says. “We do not want to-” he waves a hand at the carnage of shattered glass and dead drones and and dripping oil. “Distract you.”

Stark scrubs a hand over his head, spinning a circle in place. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, do that. Take care of yourselves. Tell us if-”

Urszula looks shocked, half scared. “Do you think it will-”

“Come after you?” Stark says. “No, no, he shouldn’t. But… he’s not what I intended, I don’t know…” he pauses, looks earnest for all his recklessness. “If something goes wrong - anything at all -  _tell us.”_

Urszula and Zemo look at Stark, look at the Captain, thunderingly furious in the background and a mirror to godling Thor, and nod.

“Maximoffs?” Urszula asks. “Do you want to come home?”

All the tension lacing Wanda’s back relaxes and she nods. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, we would like that.”

 

* * *

 

They are on an auto-pilot set Quinjet within five minutes - belongings picked up, goodbyes said, “Keep the clothes,” says Stark, “It’s the least-” and the Quinjet back shuts.

Zemo says nothing. Wanda can see it in him, straining, desperate to know if this thing Stark made is the tool of their freedom he set Wanda the task of setting into motion, but he dares not, not while they are on one of Stark’s planes.

Instead they sit, in silence, and Wanda watches the frantic minds of the Avengers draw farther and farther away.

 

* * *

 

“Did you?” Zemo asks, as soon as they’re back on the ground, back into their own clothes, hair and bodies washed clean of any carrying bugs they might have clinging to them. “Your task, Wanda-”

“Yes,” she says. “Fear and concern, concern for us.”

At her side Pietro is half-humming with blue and glee. “Soon,” he says. “He will have to think of all consequences soon. Not just us, not just the bombs that orphaned us but-”

“Everywhere,” Zemo says. “His guilt and fear will destroy him, will destroy all the Avengers if they cannot stop him. And the tyranny of the Avengers will be no longer.”

 

* * *

 

They return to their rooms. Pietro is half pacing, half straining, half ready to punch the wall in joy and frustration. Wanda takes his hand in hers, tugs him to the edge of the bed and he sits there, legs jittering, his hands running through his hair.

It’s odd, his hair. Always dark curls, and ever since they turned fourteen and started to live on the streets he’s had a few grey hairs, but since the blue and the scarlet, since their powers rose out of their skin to protect them and defend them, to fight at their fingertips, his hair has grown paler, gathered more grey hairs.  _It’s not grey,_ he said when she pointed it out.  _Not really. It’s just bleaching in the sun, but faster. See the roots?_

He runs his fingers through his hair, catching on every tangle of his curls. Wanda digs a hand into the backpack she carries, finds the comb that replaced the hairbrush that broke on their first week out of Novi Grad and shuffles closer.

She draws the comb through the first load of tangles and half smirks at Pietro’s flinch, his squeak of noise.

“Let me,” he says, taking the comb. “You always were-”

“That,” Wanda says, watching her brother calm from euphoria and excitement, “Is why you always helped.”

Pietro combs his curls to something resembling order, then turns to Wanda, tucking loose strands back into a loose plait over loose hair.

“Something feels odd,” she says. “In the city. We know that the drones left the tower, that they took the sceptre, that they came in this direction but they could go forever.”

“Do you think they are here?” Pietro asks.

“Maybe,” she says. “If no one is stationed at the castle, if no one watches it now that we took it, then… it is a shell, an old hive, waiting to be used again.”

Pietro pauses in tucking a piece of hair into the plait. “Your plan was perfect,” he says. “Zemo’s order was simple, you could do that, and you knew how to make it happen. But they took the sceptre. If Stark-”

“And it was used in the experiments-”

“The Strucker twins-”

They rise, almost as one.

 

* * *

 

They are awake as the Maximoffs come to a halt beside their cell doors, expressions bitter and angry. Their powers, it seems, only work when the two of them are together and touching, and so two cells separated by a wall keep them from being any kind of threat beyond the ordinary.

“You-” starts Andrea.

And the pair fall solidly to the ground.

 

* * *

 

Pietro stands, ready and waiting, at his sister’s shoulder. She’s sat cross-legged on the floor, focussed and silent, her mind combing through the minds of the Nazis in the cells. Occasionally she twitches or flinches, a shock of scarlet spilling from her mind to his, but mostly she is calm and coldly precise as she peels out the information that they seek.

“They didn’t alter the sceptre,” Wanda says. Her voice is a whisper from the floor, but in the silence Pietro thinks he so attuned to his sister that he could hear her heartbeat. “But they did… use it. That is how they gained their powers. Their father was  _very_ proud,” and she is half-spitting in disgust. “The sceptre has a power of its own,” she says. “Almost… a mind of its own. It whispers to people, fears and desires, jealousy and doubt, until they do what it wants.”

Pietro’s hand is light on his sister’s shoulder. “What does it want?”

Her eyes, looking up at him, are red. “I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

They crawl to bed, exhausted and worried. Their fingers interlink in the space between their beds, knuckles almost white even in sleep.

 _Be ready,_ Wanda thinks to her brother.

 _Be fierce,_ he thinks in return.

 

* * *

 

The next morning the creature called Ultron sets down before the offices.

 

* * *

 

When he strides out, Zemo at his sides, the twins feel their fear subside. There are two they know would do anything for Sokovia, would fight for their country unto their deaths, and where Zemo goes, Urszula often follows.

“I am here,” Ultron says, proud and magnanimous, spreading his vast metal arms. “To bring an end to the Avengers. To set Sokovia free.”

 

* * *

 


	8. For Fear and For Vengeance

They follow in Ultron’s footsteps - they have to, he leads them now. The great AI, made for their protection and defence, who has brought unto them the weapon that was used by HYDRA to make their weapons, to make people into weapons, who has brought unto them, “Me,” he says, “And me, and me and me. All of me,” he says, with his odd metal smiles. “Against all of them.”

The twins warn the technicians about the insidiousness of the sceptre, to be careful when handling it, when channelling energy from it, to make sure it does not sink into their minds and turn them against each other.

Only the most loyal will work on it, and they will swap in and out lest anyone become corrupt.

 

* * *

 

Ultron’s plans are many and varied. With what he has claimed of the castle, high up on the hill, he manufactures new bodies, until he is not just one but a hundred, a thousand, more bodies than anyone dares to count.

“All of me,” he had said, and Wanda wonders just how much of himself goes into these identical bodies he slips into.

The castle is theirs now, theirs once again, and with Ultron in the spreading tunnels beneath - expanded from the old cellars, prepared for a siege, and now stretching under half the city to hold the Chitauri Leviathans, the weapons, the attempts at drones and bodies Strucker was making - they inhabit the castle above, and let the tool of their freedom, the tool who will bring them justice, work in peace.

But Ultron, it seems, chafes at peace.

 

* * *

 

“This is not enough,” he says not long after arriving. He’s summoned the twins down to the sublevels - he seems  _fond_ of them, almost, with all their power, while he considers the von Strucker twins little more than playthings and possibly a spare power source (“They would destroy the country,” he says. “Destroy all for sake of their precious  _HYDRA._ ” He spits it with almost the same venom as Wanda, and it soothes their worried hearts to know he hates the Nazis and all they would do, even if Wanda cannot see his mind with the same clarity she sees all else’s.)

“I was made with two purposes,” he says. “To save Sokovia… and to end the Avengers.”

 

* * *

 

The plan is laid out, clear as shattered glass, all sharp edges and pointed precision. Ultron needs more bodies but more than that: he needs his bodies to be stronger, more advanced. He’s already gone through three iterations already and each one shows new shapes and designs, new aspects built into make him stronger, make him better.

“But I need more than this,” he says, stretching out a metal hand to admire the smooth way the metal flows and turns. “More than just…” he smiles. “All of me. I need to destroy the Avengers.” He looks to the twins, lets his metal hand fall to his metal side. “Only then can Sokovia - can the  _world_ \- be free.”

To set fear into the hearts and minds of all of the Avengers, that is Wanda’s task. Pietro to distract, Pietro to shield, Pietro to break their bones and their bodies and any who might stop them, to ferry his sister back and forth, from battlefield to safety.

Wanda to sow chaos. Wanda to warp minds.

Wanda to send the Avengers shattering like glass.

 

* * *

 

The mudflats outside Johannesburg smell of salt and oil, mud and dust, rust and metal hovering through the air from the great corpse husks of the boats drawn up and let to die.

“Wanda?” asks Pietro, stood at her shoulder, ands he almost feels bad. This vengeance they plan to take, this plan they mean to enact, it pits them against people they’ve worked with - people they know to not be terrible. She remembers the shape of Dr. Banner’s mind, the green seeping back underneath the sterile laboratory and pulsing veins of anger in the walls - sees the fear he holds of his own destruction, and knows that she has been tasked to bring that destruction forth.

Pietro stays at her shoulder, ready and willing and waiting - ready to leap forth and act at her whim. He will not regret this, will not be conflicted over this and she half resents his easy way of discarding emotions when she asks something of him. He is a knife in her hand, ready to be wielded and wiped clean of blood and she wonders how much longer she can shoulder this burden before she will need to stop, and to rest, and lean upon his reassurance once more.

 

* * *

 

The twins watch Ultron’s bodies in the distance, the Vibranium slung between them.

Then they turn, and see the destruction wrought by Hulk, caused by their hands.

 _We-_ Pietro is half in shock, looking to Wanda, hoping, praying.

Wanda swallows, folds her hands in his.  _We had to,_ she thinks.  _It is the plan. Plans involve awfulness for the good of all._

Pietro cannot meet her eyes, looks down over Johannesburg and the chaos wrought there.

“Wanda,” he says. “Its-”

“Like when we were ten.”

Wanda looks over Johannesburg with red eyes and wonders if this much bad can truly ever come to any good.

 

* * *

 

They arrive back long after Ultron. Ultron arrived back in a moment, his consciousness inhabiting yet another of his myriad bodies - “Me,” he had said, “and me, and me and me.” - but they must take the long route, even with all of Pietro’s speed. Wanda curls in her brother’s arms, and tries to rest. Behind her eyelids, all she can see is Johannesburg.

 _Rest,_ Pietro sends, slowing briefly, just long enough to dip his head, press a kiss to her hair.  _You must rest. You do not know what we must do next._

 _Nor do you,_ Wanda sends.  _You should rest as well._

She feels the momentary jolt as Pietro huffs a laugh, no more than a moment given over to it as he sprints.  _Not now,_ he thinks.  _Not until we get back._

He does not slow, this time, but his thumb still turns small and steady circles on her arm.

At this speed to do something so slow as this takes effort. Wanda tilts her face up, sees her brother’s blue eyes looking down.  _Thank you,_ she sends, and tries to sleep.

 

* * *

 


	9. what is hope made ashes

At base, Zemo and Urszula are waiting for them. With Wanda still sleeping in his arms, Pietro does not stop, but rushes past them in a blur of blue, a split of silver, and settles into their room, Wanda settled on her bed, tucked under her blankets, her tears carefully swept away by his fingertips.

They will come, soon enough, that he knows, so he sits at the foot of Wanda’s bed, a rubber ball in his hands, and watches the door.

He will give the report, let his sister sleep, and only wake her when he must.

For the horrors they have seen, for the horrors this metal man has had his sister wreak, he will see her rest and recuperate, lest it break her.

 

* * *

 

When Wanda wakes, it is because she can feel her brother’s body tucked behind her, his spine pressed to hers. He shifts his shoulders slightly, moving a blanket to keep himself warm, and his breath settles out into sleep.

Wanda follows.

 

* * *

 

Seoul is the next step. The doctor that Stark had flown in to check on everyone after the castle has a lab there, has he ability to make men from nothing or, “She will,” says Ultron, waving a cylinder of vibranium. “When I give her this. She does not yet know what she can do.”

Wanda wonders if  _they_ know what they can do yet. If they can  _survive_ what they can do. How long before Pietro’s ever-faster speed is beyond even her scope to tame? How long before his speed runs loose even of him, and he becomes nothing but a blur forevermore? How long before the scope of her gifts stretches beyond what she can handle, showing her minds and minds and minds around the world, lets her into them with all too much ease.

Regardless, Wanda knows: Ultron does understand what they will do for freedom. For justice. For no more of America’s American Way imposed upon the world.

Helen Cho’s lab is an odd thing, shining glass and metal curved away from the angular sharp edges so loved elsewhere. It’s elegant, like the woman herself, and her Cradles, and the great capabilities both hold.

Ultron has brought the vibranium - all he could spare from the spare bodies he was making - and its set in a pile by the Cradle as Ultron stalks towards Cho, reaches out to the opening chest of one of his other bodies and withdraws….

 _Oh no,_ think the twins.

 

* * *

 

Helen Cho’s eyes are glazed over, her mind hidden from Wanda’s sight behind a shield of crystalline blue. She taps at a keyboard, all worries and concerns tucked behind her lips, tucked deep within her mind, in the solid blue core that is not allowed to speak out against the will of Ultron. She is focussed on the….  _thing_ in the cradle, the yet-to-be-made metal man that is not  _only_ metal.

“He will be more,” Ultron says, metal fingers tapping over metal cradle. “Better. Like you two, like me.” He smiles down at the Cradle, his strange mouth making the shape. “He will  _be_ me, in time.” He turns to Cho, rising, all his height towering over them all. “How soon-”

“Not yet,” says Cho. “Once the brain is formed.”

The twins look to each other, grip each other’s hands so tight they can feel each other’s bones, and hope and hope and very nearly pray that they have been right to place their trust in Ultron.

 

* * *

 


	10. fears to the fore and all things dreaded

“He should not-”

“How-”

“The sceptre is being  _studied_ , he-”

“He stole it,” Wanda says, flat and sad. “He took it without warning. Can we-”

Pietro holds her hands in his, keeps her from turning her hands over and over, from digging her nails into her palms until she bleeds. He is focussed on her, watching her with all his piercing intensity and he tracks each glance she makes until she looks to him.

“Pietro-”

He can feel it in her mind,  _should we have trusted, were we right to, if we are wrong, if we are_ ** _wrong-_**

He brushes a thumb over her cheek. Leans forwards and presses a kiss to her brow. When he leans back, rocks slightly onto his heels, he speaks. “What do you want to do?”

 

* * *

 

When Wanda dances her hands over the Cradle-casket she does not expect to sense a mind beneath. When she opens the scarlet eyes of her mind she does not expect to see a mind dreaming. She looks up, across the room, to where Ultron is sitting, tapping his fingers, a cable running from his skull to the Cradle before her.

“We’re transferring his mind,” says Doctor Cho when she asks. “Base consciousness right now, but the rest in time.”

Wanda looks at Cho, mind sealed off. Looks at Ultron, mind invisible.

Looks at the Cradle, mind dancing.

 _Can we trust you?_ She wonders.

 

* * *

 

“You  _lied,”_ Wanda says, and the scarlet is pooling in her palms, ready and waiting. “You said you were here to protect Sokovia, to save us, to give us the freedom and justice we have sought for  _decades._ You said you were here to  _help_ us, to help us end the Avengers and make us free-”

“You  _will_ be free!”

Wanda lifts her chin, looks at the metal thing with fear and anger. “When we are all  _dead?”_ she asks. “Death isn’t freedom. Death is a corpse at the bottom of a chasm. Death, chosen by someone else for us, is murder. Is  _genocide_. Do you think we forget the horrors wrought on Oma and Opa?”

Ultron looks as earnest as a hunk of metal can.

Wanda shakes her head, looks half-fearfully at him down her nose, leans back into the safe embrace of her brother’s arms.

“Give us one reason,” says Pietro, glaring at Ultron from over her shoulder, his hand still wrapped around hers so tight she can feel his bones. “Give us one reason to trust you, to side with you. Do you plan to preserve Sokovia in all of this? Save Sokovia by killing everyone else?”

Ultron glances between them.

“I will make you  _free,”_ he says. “Humanity  _must_ improve. Like this-” he waves a hand. “Stagnant. At the whim of men like Stark and Captain Rogers. At the whim of warmakers and warmongers. The only thing we can do is-”

Pietro is nodding slowly, head half dipped as Wanda flicks careful fingers out at Helen Cho. “Start over.” Pietro’s voice is low and soft. “You mean to eradicate the old order to make the new.”

“Yes,” Ultron says, earnest as anything. “Yes,  _exactly._ The whole world is corrupt - Urszula and Zemo, they lied, placed you both at risk for sake of their goals, and Stark-” he grinds to a halt at the name of his maker, leans forwards and taps his fingers on the Cradle. “-I will not be his creation.”

Wanda shakes her head mutely, a litany,  _no, no, no, no_ ** _please-_  **in her mind until it is all Pietro can hear.

“You will be saved,” Ultron says, reaching a hand towards them both. “You will-” He pauses, half surprised. “They’re here.”

As Cho volunteers to halt the download, as she readies to kill the creature in the Cradle, Ultron shoots her.

The twins can do nothing but flee.

 

* * *

 

They hide in the streets of Seoul. How can they emerge and face the people they have betrayed? How can they face them and admit all they did for a hope that turned out to be false? How can they, how can they, how can they-

They have never felt more like children in all their sixteen years.

 

* * *

 

It is the archer who finds them, swinging down from a half-hovering Quinjet piloted by… Wanda recognises the minds of Stark’s Colonel friend and the Captain’s laughing companion.

“You lied to us,” the archer says, and Wanda recoils.

“He lied to us,” says Pietro, half curling Wanda towards him, letting her hide her face against him. “He promised us freedom and justice and-”

“You lied to us,” the archer said. “You used one of our own to make him, and then you  _allied with him and said_ ** _nothing.”_**

His face is dark with fury, swirling purple orb of a mind turned night-dark and storming.

“We were told to!” Pietro snarls back. “Wanda was ordered to influence Stark to make Ultron, yes, but Stark’s bombs have been-”

Something in the archer’s face eases. “They killed your parents.”

The twins, together, nod.

He scrubs a hand over his face, sighs. “You should have told us,” he says. “You should have-” He pauses. “Its too late for should-haves.”

“He’s mad,” Wanda says, and it’s barely a whisper. “He is mad, mad beyond… he would  _kill_ us, kill us  _all,_ scrub the world clean to start over, he is making a new body, one that is more than metal and he-” She chokes back a sob, chokes back tears, and meets the archer’s gaze. “We pushed Stark to make him, yes, we needed Stark to make a shield for Sokovia, to make us free, to give us justice for all everyone has done to us, vengeance on Stark for what he took-”

“We did not know he might use the sceptre,” Pietro says. “And when Ultron came, he was calm, he had a  plan, he said-”

“He would make us free.” Wanda looks at the archer, looks him in the eyes, does not let herself flinch. “You need to stop him.”

The archer - Clint Barton - looks at them, considers. Offers a hand.  _“We,”_ he says.  _“We_ need to stop him.”

 

* * *

 

Pietro feels the fury rise in Wanda. Not at the archer, no, what the archer has offered them is hope and a means to make amends, what he has offered them is a chance to make right, to create justice, to make the whole world free of what Ultron might do in the false name of  _freedom._

The fury rises at  _betrayal._ They can make this right, have been offered that.

Now, her great grand mistake of trusting the robot may be mended.

From the grand crypts and basement beneath the great architecture of Wanda’s mind, fury rises.

 

* * *

 

Clint rises back to the Quinjet, takes over piloting as the Colonel and the Captain’s laughing companion - Falcon - fly out. They follow the flight paths of the two, Wanda carried in Pietro’s speeding arms, until they arrive at a train, and a battle, and Ultron before them.

“Please-” he says but Wanda is raging, no longer grieving and Wanda raging-

She casts her magic forwards, her scarlet strength, ties Ultron into place and from moving.

“You leave us no choice,” she says, spat out in Sokovian. “You lied. You hurt us all. You would  _destroy_ and that is not saving.”

Ultron looks at her tilts his head back - so human, even as he tries to kill them all. “You don’t understand,” he says, “If you did-”

And Wanda sends him scything through a window.

 

* * *

 

The battle is in the air now, the Colonel in his great grey suit wrestling Ultron across the sky, while beneath they deal with drones, Barton shooting them, the Captain with his shield, Wanda wielding scarlet and casting it farther and farther than she ever has before.

The Captain looks to them, looks to the archer, nods.

They see it in his eyes, Wanda sees it in his mind.

He will not be their adversary if they would be their allies.

 

* * *

 


	11. A Worse Evil

They land at the tower, and half stumble off the ramp of the Quinjet. In the dark, without the lights, the tower looks far more ominous than in day, or when still warmly lit.

“Stark?” the Captain says. The other Quinjet is waiting there already, it’s Cradle payload already vanished into the depths of Stark’s lab. They hope - they very nearly  _pray_ \- that Stark has done as he should, has destroyed the budding life in the Cradle before it destroys as it’s maker, master and very own  _self_ would have it.

But when they come to the lab, to the Cradle, to Stark… he has not.

 

* * *

 

“I don’t  _care_ if you say they’re on our side, now, they still  _lied!”_

They bristle, their anger rising around their shoulders. Stark’s arm is armoured, hand glowing, and nearer to them green strength ripples through Banner’s arms though he does not change a shade. Even the archer, knowing their choice and the reasons for it, looks wary, and between them all rests the Cradle, an unknown creature made and remade by the will of other men.

Like them. Like Sokovia.

Pietro is a blur of blue around the Cradle, spinning and darting as he pulls every cable and cord out, gas and energy hissing out into the air around them.

“Hate us,” he says. “Fine.”

Wanda’s hand is light on his shaking arm. “We are only what we have been made and remade to be.” She nods at the Cradle. “What will  _he_ be, with Ultron and JARVIS and you in his head?”

She looks to her brother, her brother looks to her.

“If we are dangerous,” Wanda says. “Imagine what he might do, with all the objectives poured into his brain.”

And the lightning strikes.

It strikes the tower, bold and blinding. Thor flies in, blue and blinding. He raises his hammer, bold and blue, and the lightning strikes and shakes and shatters the air.

“He will be,” Thor says, hammer set down at his side. “Something  _new.”_

 

* * *

 

The creature from the Cradle is-

“I  _am,”_ he says, half amazed, half honest. He stares at maroon hands laced with green-grey metal, a yellow stone glowing on his brow and none of them know what to say.

“Ultron is unique,” he says. “And he is hurting.” And still none of them know what to say.

“He will end the world, though,” the creature says. “And we cannot let that happen.”

With inhuman hands he lifts the hammer.

 

* * *

 

So little time. So little knowledge. The Widow rises from between computer banks, a woman in blue at her shoulder, and shrug their shoulders, look out to the brightening horizon in horror and fear and all of them wonder.

_Where._

“What have you got?” they ask the Widow and the woman at her shoulder.

“What have you found?” they ask Stark and Banner and Clint.

“What do you know?” Clint asks the twins.

“What did you  _see?”_ asks Thor.

“Destruction,” Wanda says. “And the death of all things.”

The Widow huffs a laugh. “Poetic,” she says. “What else?”

Wanda thinks, Wanda focusses. Wanda looks to the creature born of the Cradle, the creature the godling has named Vision for that was where he saw him first, and at the stone in his brow.

A stone of mind, for mind, to control mind and empower minds.

A stone that warps those who near it.

That could warp those  _of_ it.

“Ultron,” she says, and it is half choked. “I put the idea in Stark’s head, a shield for Sokovia, to bring us protection and justice, and to protect the world.” The team looks at her in silence, watching, waiting. She turns to her brother, the eyes who have never expected anything of her but her. “He would destroy the world,” she says to Pietro, “Because he cannot protect it. If he cannot protect Sokovia-”

It is the archer who speaks. “Then he would destroy that too.”

 

* * *

 

They fly to Sokovia, all crammed into a Quinjet and Wanda spins shaking scarlet between her fingers. She nets it out, grand coils of scarlet thread, over and under and around her fingers.

They’ve called ahead. A single number, Zemo’s phone.

_It’s a lie. Get everyone out._

Urszula lost her daughter in the last bombing, Wanda knows. A head of red hair stained with blood cast over the rubble. But Zemo… Zemo leads, and Zemo has family yet. His father, his wife, his son.

He will do anything and everything to protect them, just as he will his country.

By the time they set down the evacuation has long been in quiet motion. Pietro half wonders why Ultron has not made his move yet, until Wanda shows him her blinding vision again.

A meteor. A barrage. Destruction of everything.

He does not need, Pietro sees, to move now. To take as many up into the air as he can. He could, if he wanted, keep a distraction to prevent them from their duty, but he does not need to.

As far as Ultron is concerned, everyone is due to die.

 

* * *

 

“Me,” he says, “And me, and me and me. All of me,” he says, with his odd metal smiles. “Against all of you.”

And the world quakes and shakes and rises beneath their feet.

 

* * *

 

There is rage in Wanda, and there is serenity.

Pietro looks to his sister, cradling a cataclysm in her hands, her eyes glowing crimson with fury as she stares down Ultron, and knows she is here to win or to die.

They are sixteen. All they have is each other.

He plants himself at her shoulder, all his blue blur and silver shakes tamed to absolute certainty at her side.

If she dies, so does he.

 

* * *

 

Wanda casts scarlet outwards, a grand wave and at her side Pietro is anchored, all his speed gone to stillness for her sake, all his speed turned to scarlet in her mind and hands and in the wave cast before them. Beside them again are the armours of Stark and the Colonel’s war machine, light from their hands bright and fierce, and the Captain’s shield driving forward into the drone that rises beside them. They are going to have to split up - this is  _half the city_ rising now - and Bruce Banner stands between them, human and soft, furious and calm at once, his mind warping green, the veins of it through his mind turning to vines, laboratory to a rainforest.

They stumble as the ground shakes, and Hulk ploughs forwards.

 

* * *

 

 _I did this,_ Wanda’s mind sings. Furious and angry her memories snarl,  _so I will make this right._

There is a driving force to her every strike, every movement made and planned to shield those not yet escaped, to scythe into the drones that dodge and dart at them - fast, yes, but not as fast as her silver-blue brother, darting and laughing, his fists fiercer and faster and shattering silver and steel into shards.

Wanda shields, Wanda strikes.

Wanda drives forwards, towards the core of Ultron.

 

* * *

 

Over the comms there is chatter. Pietro can hear it but Wanda refused a comm, swore her mind to loop into her brother’s and relay all messages that way, a way more reliable that a small piece of metal that might fall out at any moment.

 _We need to burn Ultron out of the Net,_ says Stark’s FRIDAY, relaying the words from the man himself.

 _I can do that,_ says the Vision, metal-and-flesh mind as able to interloop with the aetheric internet as Ultron.

 _Take to the sun,_ says the Colonel to the Captain’s friend.

 _Share the advantage,_ says the Falcon.

Thor is flying around freely, spinning his hammer into a thrumming circle, sending down strikes of lightning where-ever Ultron clusters.

“We need to get the people off the rock,” says the Captain, and he is there, right where Pietro has paused to a halt.

 _“Wait,_ ” says the Widow’s friend down the comms.  _“I called some backup for us.”_

And beyond the brink of the rising city, rises something more.

 

* * *

 

“SHIELD,” Wanda breathes, half shocked and half-laughing, the adrenaline in her gut and in her heart, and it is making her tremble as much as her brother does as he leashes his speed. “It is SHIELD.”

Pietro raises an eyebrow. “This is SHIELD?”

“What it’s meant to be,” says the Captain. At their back the people are rushing forwards, from the lifeboats agents are reaching arms out, pulling people close, getting as many off the rock as they can.

Wanda nods, turns to twist a drone into steel shards, and sighs. “They are still warmakers. We must end that.”

The Captain, behind her, looks half-distraught at her words.

 

* * *

 

The adrenaline is in her. The adrenaline is in him.

This is battle, this is fight. All the protests they ever went to are not this. All the fights they have fought through are not this. All their training, all their teaching, all and everything they have ever known or experienced-

The only thing that compares is the shell and all that does is give them driving rage to fuel them further.

 

* * *

 

“18,000 and climbing,” says Hill. “Vision, if you’re going to-”

“I shall.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda is still swirling scarlet from her hands, keeping a grand shield above those scurrying to the lifeboats, sending sharp scythes of it outwards to the drones as she feels the flare of a mind in the distance.

 _He did it,_ she sends to her brother as the glow of the mind fades to almost stillness.  _But the drones-_

“It is done,” relays Pietro down the comms. “But there are still-”

 

* * *

 

She is half in her brother’s mind as the last of the people get on the boat, as the drones are struck down and down and down.

She feels, in the distance, the faint glitter of the gold-grey-green mind, she sees the ruined temple of the captain, the swirling purple orb, the winter plain, Starks’ garish armour. She sees Hulk - a rainforest of rambunctious, destructive energy, ready to grow still further.

The order down the comms, fed to her from her brother’s mind:  _Thor, take the core. Everyone else: get rid of the robots._

 

* * *

 

She knows. In a sheer and blinding moment, she knows.

She feels it, feels it like a metal hand in her own chest, around her own heart, her own ribs shattering.

She feels her brother’s pain, she feels his screams, and she can do nothing but scream with him.

 

* * *

 

When it is over, she rises. Shaking and trembling, fearful and alone and full of grief and anger.

There is no Pietro to loop her mind to, to hear the comms from. There is no one there she cares to save. Zemo and Urszula - all of them are already off, already down, already with all the unenhanced down below in as close to safety as there gets.

There is nothing but grief and anger and fury.

 

* * *

 


	12. a GOD are you?

Long ago, when her powers first came to her, they were wisps, fading off from her fingers and barely red enough to be called scarlet. Then, they were smoke, stronger wisps, rising off her wrists like smoke from steaming embers, scarlet growing richer at the core. Then, then they were a wave, vast and aethereal, yes, but moving like water, the smoke rising off them like sea spray from a wave and red, red,  _red_ down to the very core.

Now, in her anger and her grief and her fury, her scarlet drips from her hands like blood.

“Wanda,” says Ultron’s primary, striding to the core, his face… open and in shock at the sight of her.

His hand drips blood too.

She casts a hand forward and a wave of scarlet follows, scything and snapping like serpents.

“Wanda-” Ultron speaks again, but she does not care, does not  _care, does not_ ** _CARE._**

He has taken from her, taken from her the one thing no one should ever take from her, the one thing no one had any  _right_ to take from her, the one thing they had kept spun between them since they were children and he is gone,  _gone_ and she is empty and torn, her mind laid bare to the ravages of the world and so she loops her scarlet around his steel ribs and she  _pulls._

“Wanda,” Ultron says, metal screeching as she pulls him to her. “I had t-”

_To do it?_

Wanda’s eyes are burning red. She cannot see colours anymore, just her red and the silver and grey and white and black of the world around them. The scarlet cuts through it all - bonds of blood tying them together.

The blood of her brother, dripping from Ultron’s hand.

She pulls more steel out, peels back vibranium from steel and where the metals are interlinked she simply  _pulls,_ all her grief and her rage and her deep abiding fury at all the wongs the world have wrought on Sokovia and on Pietro and on her.

“You took him from me.” Her voice is hoarse, throat torn from screaming alongside her brother and she can taste blood at the back of her mouth. She leans forwards, spits, and scarlet splatters the stone beside the scarlet dripping from Ultron’s hand.

Her brother’s blood.

“You took him from me,” she says, and it is soft, and scarred and something terrible to behold as, with a clenched fist, she tears his heart out.

 

* * *

 

She falls to her knees. One hand touches the blood of her brother, the other grips the core she tore out, but her elbows are on her thighs and and her mouth is wide open and she is keening out her loss to any and all who might hear it.

The core falls from her hand. Her fingers are sticky with blood.

And all the adrenaline, all the strength, all the love and anger that had given her purpose for years… is gone.

 

* * *

 

“Agent Maximoff,” says godling Thor, half hovering in the air as the world falls. “Let us get you gone from here.”

In the distance she can see the Vision has flown in to take Thor’s place, is hovering above the core, a beam from his forehead connecting the vast column of vibranium that pierces the city. On his hands is-

“He took your brother to the Helicarrier,” Thor says, holding Wanda carefully as he flies, hammer swung out before him. “They retrieved a Cradle from Seoul, they hope-”

And Wanda’s heart leaps into her throat.

 

* * *

 

They cannot let her see her brother, not while he is in the Cradle. Not while Helen Cho - bloodied bandage still bound around her side - is bustling and hurrying, coding and checking, pressing this button and that to ensure… that her brother might live.

“We don’t know,” Helen says. “I… to make the Vision, that was something… But this is… it is a human body, and Vision fetched him quickly, if we do this  _right-_ ”

 _If they do this right,_ Wanda learns, is what her whole hope is built on.

Hope.

When have they - when has  _Sokovia_ \- ever had anything more than  _hope?_

 

**Finis**

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this! Please leave comments!


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